The Floating Outfit 61

by J. T. Edson

  “They were headed for some trouble,” the Kid stated.

  “Could have been riding away after helping finish some,” Caldwell suggested.

  “That’s possible, but not likely,” Dusty replied. “Word about gun-trouble spreads like fire across dry grass, and we’ve heard nothing.”

  “Perhaps the trouble was a long way off.”

  “It’d have to be a long way for word not to spread. And if they had been paid off, they’d not likely be riding in a bunch. Hired guns don’t make many friends even among their own kind, and there’s precious few of them would trust each other when carrying pay from some fuss.”

  “Might they be outlaws on their way to a robbery?” asked Caldwell.

  “Could be,” Dusty admitted. “There are some hired guns who mix robbery with taking pay for fighting. But that doesn’t explain how they come to be carrying this damned paper.”

  “That is strange,” Caldwell agreed.

  “Strange isn’t the word I’d put to it,” Dusty said.

  “Or me,” grunted the Kid.

  “It couldn’t just be a joke?”

  Before either Dusty or the Kid—Doc being fully engrossed with his work and ignoring the others—could reply to Caldwell’s suggestion, they saw two riders appear in the distance. While the Eastern-bred man could make out only a pair of dots on the horizon, the Kid made a correct identification instantly and Dusty only a short time later.

  “Mark and Waco,” Dusty said.

  “Coming up like it was feed time,” confirmed the Kid. “Or like there was a pretty gal waiting here—or a father out with his scattergun back at Junction.”

  “Could the poster be a joke, Captain Fog?” Caldwell persisted.

  Ten minutes later he received his answer and knew that the poster was no joke; or if aimed to be, had brought about near tragic results.

  “Damned fool kid,” Dusty drawled. “Did you telegraph to home and tell them I’m still all right, Mark?”

  “Thought it’d be best,” the blond giant answered.

  Knowing the almost uncanny manner in which news could spread over the range country, Mark wasted no time in visiting Junction City’s Wells Fargo office and dispatching a message to Dusty’s parents in Polveroso City, Texas, informing them that rumors of their son’s death were untrue. The wisdom of the action showed when word reached Rio Hondo county, only three days after the incident in Junction City, that Dusty had been killed by a knife over on the Arizona-New Mexico line.

  “Reckon that bunch were looking for you, Dusty?” asked Waco.

  “I don’t think so,” Dusty replied. “They didn’t come in like they expected any trouble.”

  “Happen paleface medicine man don’t kill him off,” drawled the Kid. “We’ve got us a gent here who knows all the answers.”

  Doc gave a sniff and answered, “Way you’re shooting ’em these days, a first-year student could cure them.”

  However he knew from his examination that the man had been exceptionally lucky. Knowing the Kid, Doc did not for a moment believe the bullet had been aimed to make such a fancy hit. With Dusty’s life at stake, the Kid would not waste time in taking the careful aim necessary to send a bullet so it merely carved a slice out of the under-side of the hard case’s arm.

  A couple of inches higher and the man would never have used his arm again. While the forty grain powder charge of the Winchester ’73 might be light as far as rifle loads went, the conformation of the bullet made it a wicked weapon to use against men. Early in the rifle’s development it had been discovered that the mixture of a sharp-pointed, centerfire bullet and a tubular magazine invited trouble. A hard knock might send the point of the bullet ramming into the primer cap of the round ahead in the tube magazine and cause a premature detonation, damaging the gun beyond repair. To overcome the failing, Winchester cut off the point of the bullet to leave a flat surface larger than the circumference of the primer cap. While this effectively prevented premature discharge, it also gave the bullet a terrible mushroom on impact. Much in the same way as a dum-dum bullet, the flat-nosed .44.40 round did little damage at its point of entry but spread out in a funnel-like manner once inside.

  Working fast, for he had delayed almost to the limits of safety, Doc cleaned the wound, stopped the flow of blood and examined the damage. Although very painful and almost touching the bone, no permanent damage ought to come from the wound. Using clean white cloth brought by the woman who helped with the delivery of Caldwell’s child, Doc bandaged the wound and strapped it to the man’s side to keep it immobile. Even as he completed his work, Doc felt the man stirring and heard groans which told of approaching consciousness.

  “He’ll do,” the slim Texan stated, rising and turning to Dusty.

  Knowing Doc’s temper tended to be a mite touchy when engaged in such work, the other members of the floating outfit had withdrawn and waited for permission before coming close once more.

  “Do we talk to him now?” asked the Kid mildly, but there was no mildness in his eyes.

  Directing a questioning glance at Doc, Dusty caught a shake of the head and replied, “Leave him come out of it first, Marie, get him into the shade and have water fetched for him. Waco, go take the supplies to the folk who ordered them, then head down to the river and bring in the horses closer to camp.”

  “Yo!” answered the youngster and departed.

  “Lon, see to the burying.”

  “I thought you’d forgot all about that,” grunted the Kid.

  “I’ll just bet you did,” Dusty grinned. “Don’t take all day. I want us all on hand when we hold some talk with that hombre.”

  By the time Waco and the Kid returned from handling their work, the wounded man—who claimed the unimaginative name of Brown—had recovered sufficiently to sit up. Resting his back against the wheel of one of the wagons, he watched with a sense of foreboding as the Texans gathered in a half circle before him. At Dusty’s request, the people of the train went about their business and left his men to deal with Brown. Only Caldwell, something of a student of human nature, hovered in the background.

  Brown wondered what might be due to happen to him. While nobody had mentioned the matter, he felt sure that they must have found the wanted poster and figured they would want some questions answered.

  “Why’d you come here?” asked Dusty.

  Staring up at the grim-faced Texans, Brown ran his tongue-tip across lips which suddenly felt very dry. “For a meal.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Was going with Baines, him you shot, Cap’n Fog.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hombre!” snapped the Ysabel Kid. “You can do it hard or easy, but we aim to have us some answers. It’s all one to me how we get ’em.”

  “But not to me,” objected Doc. “I wasted time patching this cuss up.”

  “I don’t know where he was taking us!” yelped Brown. “So help me, that’s the living truth. I’d been over in New Mexico, just earning eating money, when I met up with Baines. He’d got something on, needed a few boys to handle it, so I took on.”

  “Without knowing where you’d be going, or why?” said Dusty skeptically.

  “He paid out twenty bucks a man. What’d I to lose?”

  “Who put the bounty on my scalp?”

  The question came as something of a shock and Brown did not have the presence of mind to think up a satisfactory lie. “Wh-what bounty?”

  “Don’t fuss us, hombre!” growled the Kid, Comanche-mean and scowling down. “We all know a heap of ways to make a man unhappy.”

  “Sure,” agreed Mark, idly snapping his clenched right fist into the palm of the left hand. “Now me, I always reckon working on the nose makes a man talk best.”

  Out came Waco’s right hand Colt in a casual flicker of movement, pin-wheeling on an educated forefinger, slapping staghorn grips into his palm and the thumb easing back the hammer. Almost gently he laid the gun’s .4
5 muzzle on the man’s nose end. “It sure does,” he drawled. “Or I could stand off a few yards and shoot holes in his ears. They always talk when I do that.”

  “Unless you miss and put the bullet between their eyes,” Doc commented. “I like to work close up. Go fetch me my doctoring tools, boy, and I’ll show you how to extract answers like teeth.”

  Anticipation of what would come had always formed a major part in the success of any such campaign. Once in the war, Dusty had seen the rebel spy, Belle Boyd, obtain information from a captured Yankee agent by using much the same technique. Since then he had handled interrogations in a similar manner when working as a lawman. Everything depended on whether the one being treated believed his captors intended to carry out the threats.

  Watching the Texans’ faces. Brown did not for a moment doubt that any refusal to co-operate would bring painful results. Nothing in the Ysabel Kid’s past history hinted that he, for one, possessed any great scruples when dealing with an uncooperative enemy. Brown wondered how he ever thought that dark, savage, Comanche face looked young and innocent.

  “You wouldn’t allow them to torture this man, Captain Fog,” Caldwell put in.

  “Well, now,” Dusty replied, pleased that the other interrupted. “That all depends.”

  “Upon what?”

  “Whether he tells us what we want to know, or not.”

  “But he’s wounded!” Caldwell protested.

  “Which same we never asked him to get that way,” Mark pointed out.

  “All he has to do is talk and we don’t want hide nor hair of him,” the Kid continued.

  “Might even call it payment for my medical services,” Doc went on.

  “Comes to a real smart point, mister,” drawled Waco, turning to Caldwell. “There’s no way you can stop us doing it.”

  Which Caldwell had to admit was all too true. He might be a young man with ideals, but doubted if any of his fellow travelers attained such high standards. None of them would go against the Texans to help a man who had been part of a bunch planning to rob them.

  Without realizing it, Caldwell had helped Dusty by his attempted interference. Maybe Brown hoped for intervention by the dudes. If so, he now knew that no such aid could be expected.

  Caldwell opened his mouth to speak, then gave thought to Doc’s words. Not only Brown owed the slim, pallid Texan a debt for medical services received. Looking at Dusty’s party, Caldwell felt puzzled at the change in their ways. No longer did they act like a bunch of cheerful schoolboys, but stood grim, cold, menacing. Somehow such a change did not seem to be in character—although clearly the point escaped the scared-looking hard case.

  “What do you want to know?” croaked Brown.

  “Where that reward dodger came from,” Dusty answered. “I don’t know where Baines picked his up from—and that’s the gospel truth, Cap’n. But I’ve seen them in more than one place.”

  “What kind of place?”

  “Saloons, our hang-outs, different stations along the Outlaw Trail. They’ve been well spread over the past few weeks.”

  Dusty nodded at the confirmation of his thoughts on the affair. In every major town throughout the West, at least one saloon served as headquarters and hang-out for professional gun fighters. Such places acted as gathering points, information collectors and employment bureaus for men who sold their skill with a gun. Anybody who knew where to look could contact hired killers of varying ability by visiting one of the hang-outs. While not all hired guns were outlaws, many augmented their earnings in lean times by riding on robberies; so it seemed likely that Brown would know the Outlaw Trail. Running from the Canadian line, through Landusky, Montana, down via Wyoming’s Buffalo, Kaycee and Hole-In-The-Wall country, to Robbers’ Roost and Brown’s Hole in Utah, on, curving from north-east Arizona, across the line and down into Mexico via the southwest edge of New Mexico, the Outlaw Trail had along its length many places where wanted men could gather, exchange news and be safe from the law. Word and the posters could be passed along the Outlaw Trail with the certainty of it spreading rapidly and where it would do most good.

  “That poster didn’t say where to go for the bounty,” Waco said. “Now me, I’d say that’d be the first thing anybody fool enough to try for it’d want to know.”

  “Word had it that the man who got Cap’n Fog should ought to take his gunbelt to Pasear Hennessey’s place down on the Mexican border.”

  “Do you know it, Lon?” asked Dusty.

  “He’s got two places,” replied the Kid, whose smuggling up-bringing gave him an encyclopedic knowledge of the Mexican border country. “One on an island in the Rio Grande and the other at the south end of the Outlaw Trail. Now happen this gent can tell us which one—”

  “The one on the Trail,” yelped Brown, hot and eager to appear helpful.

  “Thanks,” Dusty said.

  “I’d thank you myself,” purred the Kid, his bowie knife sliding from its sheath. “Only I know you’re lying in your teeth. Not even Pasear’s own mother’d be hawg-stupid enough to leave him to hold five thousand dollars of real money.”

  “I’m not lying, Kid!” wailed Brown. “All I know is, the feller who gets Cap’n Fog has to take the gunbelt as proof he done it and Pasear’ll tell him where to go to collect.”

  “Do we call on Mr. Hennessey, Dusty?” asked Waco.

  “And leave the remuda out here?” smiled the small Texan.

  “Take them back with us’d strike some as the answer,” sniffed the youngster.

  “Then ‘some’ ought to know that Colonel Raines wants those horses urgently, boy,” Mark pointed out.

  “Happen you three could handle the remuda, me and the boy could take it,” the Kid suggested.

  “Neither of them do any work anyways,” Mark drawled. “Why’d we miss ’em?”

  Knowing that the Kid would not ask for Waco’s assistance unless the matter could be handled without it, Dusty gave his agreement to the request.

  “All right,” he said. “Take him. Need anything else?”

  “Four of the best hosses in the remuda to ride relay—and rifle shells.”

  “How many?”

  “All you can spare,” the Kid said quietly.

  “I’ve a full box I can let you have,” Mark offered.

  “Gracias,” answered the Kid. “How about you, Doc?”

  “Damned if I don’t buy a Centennial,” Doc growled. “That way only the boy’ll be able to bum shells off me.”

  On a visit to Chicago, Waco had purchased one of the latest rifles to leave the Winchester factory. vii With a caliber of .45.75, the rifle first appeared at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and was the company’s answer to the heavy caliber, single-shot rifles of the day Taking a much larger bullet than its predecessor, the rounds could not be interchanged. However, Waco brought along a good supply of ammunition in the hope of sampling the hunting around Backsight and giving the rifle a thorough shooting trial.

  Despite his comments, Doc went straight off to collect the ammunition. He saw that Dusty and Mark both contributed their share to the sum total and this puzzled him. Knowing that the Kid never travelled without at least a hundred rounds for his rifle along, Doc felt puzzled. Taken with his normal supply, the Kid now had getting on for two hundred and fifty bullets. A tolerable amount when one remembered that he hit more times than missed when using that magnificent rifle.

  Dusty and Mark had much the same thoughts as Doc, but all knew better than waste time in asking questions. On their arrival, the scout had cancelled his rush to Junction City and taken the opportunity to go out on a meat-hunting expedition. When he returned, the Texans planned to move on with the herd of blood stock for delivery to the ranch of Colonel Raines. Until that time they had work to do, preparing Waco and the Kid for a long, hard and fast ride to Pasear Hennessey’s place. Riding relay, two such horse-masters as the Kid and Waco could cover the one hundred and fifty miles to Pasear Hennessey’s place in just over two days. How long
their business took depended on Hennessey’s willingness to co-operate, then they would have to make the best possible time north to rejoin Dusty at Backsight.

  Working with the skill of long practice, Mark and Dusty cut out four of the best horses from the remuda. Colonel Raines would understand the necessity when told and make no complaints. By riding alternately on the two horses and their personal mount the Kid and Waco would be able to travel much faster than would be possible using one horse.

  After collecting and saddling his huge, wild-looking white stallion, the Kid looked to where Waco led up one of the relay—the paint having been pushed hard during the ride from Junction City.

  “You got all you need, Lon?” asked Dusty.

  “Everything,” agreed the Kid, sliding his rifle into the saddle-boot. “All right, let’s go make talk with Pasear Hennessey.”

  Chapter Five – The Wild Onion Crew

  THE NOONDAY SILENCE of Backsight was suddenly shattered by the thunder of hooves, wild cowboy yells and the crack of shots as half a dozen riders tore along Main Street in the direction of the Arizona State Saloon.

  Standing at the window of the Bismai Cafe, Maisie Randel watched the newcomers with first tolerant amusement, then growing concern as she saw the complete disregard the party showed for the property or persons of the citizens. One of the cowhands turned his horse; rode it on to the sidewalk and charged along to the detriment of the few pedestrians who used what ought to have been a safe footpath. On seeing a man and woman take hurried leaps into the ladies’ wear shop that had taken over the premises left vacant by Dusty Fog’s smashing of the Considine bunch—in which Maisie, then a Pinkerton operative, took a major part—she turned and called across towards the kitchen.

  “Biscuits!”

  Having already heard the ruckus in the street, Maisie’s husband stepped into the dining-room, leaving his supervision of the evening’s menu. Biscuits Randel stood almost six foot three and had heft to match it. Genial featured most of the time, he did not show it as he joined and towered over his wife. Since leaving the Pinkerton service, Maisie had changed little. Mousey blonde hair, neatly coiffured, framed a good-looking, merry face that could become grim and determined when necessary. Good food and a settled life had filled out her frame in a plump, attractive manner. Healthy exercise and hard work kept the plumpness firm flesh and under the spotlessly clean gingham dress she curved in at the waist naturally. Maisie could claim to be as shapely a woman as any in town even though in her middle thirties.